Miles’s eyes became as hard as Carson’s. “Yeah, I’m sure. I saw them shift, become wolves, and go after people. Very, very sure.”
Rae fell silent. Some Shifters claimed that Shifters who didn’t take the Collar, with nothing to restrain them, slowly went feral. Maybe it was genetics, the argument went, maybe Shifters were simply changing, finding it difficult to adjust to the modern world. In theory, those who hadn’t taken the Collar would succumb to the gradual deterioration of their sanity.
But the Collared Shifter leaders, like Eoin, had begun concluding that the feral tendencies were rarer than they’d thought. Collars were being removed from Shifters gradually, in secret, and the Shifters who’d had their Collars off were fine so far.
Now Miles, a part Shifter, was telling her there were violent, un-Collared Shifters still out there.
“My friends aren’t the Shifters you saw,” Rae said. “Zander and Ezra are not feral or violent. Nothing wrong with them.”
Miles’s lips thinned. “They’re un-Collared. They have the potential to go feral.” He steered them around another rock, the fog brushing the windows. “What about you? Why are you with them?”
Rae wasn’t about to tell him. “Long story. What about you? What kind of Shifter are you?”
He looked sideways at her. “Fox.”
Rae blinked. “No, you’re not. There’s no such thing as a fox Shifter.”
“Beg to differ,” Miles said. “Gray fox. My mother was Shifter, my father human. My father, who was a Marine, died a couple years ago. My mom left after that. Kind of disappeared. She gets in touch once in a while.”
Now Rae stared in shock. “She abandoned her cub?”
“Cub?” Miles shot a surprised glance at her. “You mean me? I’m fifty-two. I think I can take care of myself by now.”
“That’s no age for a Shifter,” Rae said. “Shifters shouldn’t leave each other. We’re close. Family is everything.”
Not that Rae had ever known hers. Rage shook her at the thought of a mother deliberately abandoning her cub. Her own mother had tried to stay with Rae until her dying breath, so Eoin had told her. A mother walking away from her family made her seriously angry.
“Can you get us out of this place?” she asked Miles impatiently.
Miles twitched his fingers on the wheel. The boat was moving dead slow, the white fog pressing around them. Rae could no longer see the outline of Zander’s fishing boat.
“Probably not,” Miles said. “I told Carson that when we came in here. The gasses are messing with my sense of smell.”
“Mine too. Bring Zander up here. He’ll know how to navigate through.”
Miles shook his head. “Don’t think so. Too dangerous. The big man stays in a cage until we get to Shifter Bureau in Anchorage.”
“We won’t make it anywhere near Shifter Bureau if we are stuck in here,” Rae pointed out.
Miles hesitated. Rae read that he knew the truth of her words but he was afraid of Zander. Or maybe he was afraid of Carson, his cold-eyed partner.
“Damn it,” Miles whispered. He picked up a handheld radio and let it crackle to life. Rae almost dove for it, worried he was about to betray her, when he said, “Carson, get that Russian up here. He needs to help me.”
A few seconds of silence, then a crackle in return. “Copy that.”
Miles went back to trying to pilot the boat. Looking at him now, Rae saw the Shifter in him—his movements were almost graceful as he danced his fingers over the controls, his balance perfect.
A fox? Rae had never heard of such a thing. How such a large man morphed into something as small and delicate as a fox . . . She was going to have to see it to believe it.
The door swung open, letting in chill air, fog, smell, and the rumble of engines. Carson, his pistol out, marched Piotr inside, his hand full of the back of Piotr’s flannel jacket.
“By the way,” Piotr was saying. “I’m an American citizen.”
“You’re harboring Shifters,” Carson said with curt derision. “Which makes you a criminal.”
So, he was in as sweet a mood as ever.
Piotr shot Rae a glance. She gave him a nod to show she was all right.
Carson shoved Piotr toward Miles. Rae stepped out of the way, trying to fade into the background. She’d learned to be good at that in a houseful of alpha males. Not that Rae had been exactly submissive to them—she’d simply stood back and watched them bluster, then slid around them to do exactly what she wanted.
Carson seemed to have the failing of many human men in believing that females were weaker and less intelligent than males. Shifters rarely shared that idiocy . . . well, except when it came to who could be Guardians.
Carson paid little attention to Rae. As she stood back, she studied the controls and the readouts on Miles’s computer. She didn’t know what all the lines and squiggles meant but she was sure the solid clumps of red were bad.
“You think I can navigate out of the Graveyard?” Piotr was saying, spluttering. “I cannot work miracles.”
“Do it,” Carson said. “If we go down, you go down with us.”
“Oh, hey, no pressure on me,” Piotr said.
He bent over the controls with Miles. Miles gave a nervous sideways look at Rae, as though fearing she’d blurt to Carson that he was part Shifter. But Rae would keep his secret. To paraphrase what Carson had just said—if Miles went down, she went down too.
“What is that?” Miles asked sharply.
He pointed to something that blipped on the computer screen. At the same time, Rae heard a curious popping sound even over the rumble of engines.
Piotr jerked his head up. “Hard about! Hard about! Now!”
Miles, understanding Piotr’s alarm, cranked the wheel. The boat listed hard to port as he turned away from the wall of ice that had been running parallel to them. As they rushed into denser, yellower fog, an immense chunk of white and black mountain descended vertically into the sea.
The impact sent a huge wave across the water, shoving the boat sideways. Rae watched black water rise through the fog and blot out all view from the port windows. They were going to turn over—she knew it.
She rushed at Carson. “Get Zander and Ezra. Let them out. They’ll die!”
The lurching boat had Rae ramming straight into him. Carson grabbed Rae’s shoulders to right her, but not before Rae’s hand landed on the man’s large bunch of keys. She yanked them free and was heading out the door before Carson’s shout left his mouth.
“Stop her!”
Wherever Carson’s men were, there was no sight of them on deck. The deck was almost perpendicular anyway, but the gunwale was still above water, if barely. The men were probably staying put below or maybe already in the lifeboat.
Rae clung to railings and ropes on the cabin’s outside walls, there for just this reason, and hauled herself to the stern door. It opened easily, letting her into a narrow hallway that stank of diesel and brine.
The doors along the pitching corridor weren’t locked, showing her an office, and a couple of bedrooms, one painfully neat, the other a bit more cluttered. No Shifters, not even a sign of them.
They must be on a deck below this one, though Rae wasn’t sure how to get there. She refused to listen to the anguish in her heart that maybe they’d simply thrown Ezra and Zander over the side.
A door with ventilation slats at the end of the hall was locked. Rae took up the keys she’d stolen, trying to still her shaking hands as she chose a likely one and slid it into the lock.
The key fit but wouldn’t turn. She jerked it out, marked its place on the ring with her thumb, and went to the next one. This one wouldn’t even go in. Next one again fit but wouldn’t turn.
“Come on,” she breathed. She’d have to change to her in-between beast and rip the door out of the wall. No time for anything else.
The next key fit. Rae turned it and opened the door.
Two men came rushing up the stairs beyond the door, weapons
drawn. At the same time Carson burst into the hallway behind her. Rae was caught—no way around them. Carson drew his pistol and aimed it at Rae, right between her eyes.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Rae felt her wolf come. No way it couldn’t. Her Collar sparked once under her jacket, the tearing pain making her yelp.
Carson looked past Rae to his men. “Bring the big Shifter to the wheelhouse. We need him.”
The two guards looked momentarily surprised but pasted on hard expressions and disappeared back down the stairs. The distraction gave Rae the chance to clamp down on her shift and remain human, quieting her Collar.
“You,” Carson said, still eyeing Rae over his pistol. “Come away from there and give me back my keys.”
Rae clenched her hands and didn’t move. “I will when I see Zander safe.”
“Your loyalty is admirable. But they’re Shifters. They’ll use you and abandon you.”
“Because you know so much about Shifters,” Rae returned.
Carson’s voice was like ice. “They’re born wild beasts and that’s how they stay, no matter that they can show us a human form. They trick you with honeyed words, and then kill.”
Rae raised her brows. “Had a bad experience, did you?”
“You could say that,” Carson said. “Shifters killed my family. Brutally slaughtered them before my eyes. Now tell me how they’re furry little animals we all should understand. And while you’re doing it, get over here.”
Rae’s mouth hung open. Carson’s bone-cold eyes told her he wasn’t lying about the killing. Rae wished she could hotly deny that a Shifter would do such a thing, but she knew that Un-Collared Shifters and feral Shifters—any Shifter with enough anger, really—were capable of savagery. She only hoped that someone had caught the Shifters that had done such a terrible thing.
Zander’s grumbling voice came up the stairs behind her and she swung around. Zander had chains around his hands and was led by one guard and followed by the second. He had to brace himself on the wall as the stairwell listed.
“What the hell did you do to this boat?” he growled at Carson. “I was enjoying my nap. Couldn’t you keep it upright for at least another hour?”
* * *
Zander reached the top of the stairs. Rae’s face was stark white as she stood in the middle of the hallway and Carson’s glittered eyes above his pistol behind her.
“Excuse us, sweetheart,” Zander said to Rae. “We need to get by.”
The steel chains that bound his wrists had a bite of Fae magic in them—this Carson guy knew what he was doing. The cage Zander had just been let out of had been woven with Fae spells as well, which ensured Zander couldn’t break out of it with strength alone.
The first guard wanted Rae to go out ahead of them but Zander kept moving along, forcing the guard to push past Rae. This put the guard between Rae and Carson’s gun, which was what Zander wanted.
As Zander brushed against her, his tense body relaxed. Her touch, even this brief one, soothed his hurts.
He’d gotten Rae into this adventure, the kind Zander ran into all the time in his interesting life, and he’d get her out again. If he’d been alone, he wouldn’t worry—he’d simply wait to see what happened. But the need to protect Rae rose up and defeated all other concerns.
He sent her a wink as he passed, to let her know that all was well. Zander’s reward was a quick scowl. He wanted to laugh.
The lead guard quickened his pace and the one behind Zander prodded him to move. The guy behind him was hefty and had a gun but Zander knew that even chained he could easily break the guy’s neck. He decided to let him live and followed the first guard to the open door to the deck.
“Come on, Rae,” Zander said over his shoulder. “Let’s see what fun we can have.”
He stepped into a world of strangeness. The fog had become tinted yellow, both from the fumaroles jetting out from the black cliffs and from the rising sun. Fog swallowed the bow and stern of the boat, ensuring that Zander couldn’t see past the gunwale a few feet next to him. But he could hear.
He’d heard the glacier calving into the water and knew that Piotr had gotten them turned aside in time. Another roar from the same direction told him more ice had fallen from cliffs into the sea. Those chunks of ice would sink and then pop up again, possibly right under their boat.
Zander also heard a rumble he didn’t like. The beautiful scenery of the Alaska Peninsula had been formed by volcanoes that were far from dead—eruptions happened, and so did plenty of earthquakes. He’d read a statistic that Alaska had more earthquakes per year than the rest of North America combined. He believed it.
They were sailing blind. The boat had righted somewhat, as Piotr or Carson’s pilot steadied it, but they were pivoting in a circle, going nowhere.
Carson opened the door to the wheelhouse and stood back so the two guards could crowd Zander inside. Where they thought Zander was going to run to, he didn’t know.
Carson pointed his pistol at Zander. “Right the boat and show them how to steer us out of here.”
Zander glanced at the gun. “Because threatening to shoot me is going to reassure me. Maybe I’ll tell you I won’t help until you put all the firearms away.”
Carson wasn’t impressed with that. “I will shoot the Russian and then the other Shifter,” he said, “until you cooperate.”
Nothing about Rae. Hmm. Zander rolled his eyes. “Whatever. Piotr, what have you gotten us into? Nice save on the glacier, by the way.”
Piotr gave him a shaky look. “It is no problem.”
Zander motioned with his bound hands for Piotr to move so he could get close to the controls. He turned his head and looked into the eyes of the tall black man who kept one hand on the wheel. The man stared back at him steadily but his dark eyes flickered with unease.
Zander held his gaze a moment. “Seriously?” he asked, then shook his head. He’d talk with him about being part Shifter later. “Where are we?”
The pilot, Miles he’d heard the guards refer to him as, pointed a blunt finger at the chart on the computer. “There. I think.”
“Oh good,” Zander said. “We sort of know where we are. Rae, sweetie. Make someone bring me a cup of coffee. Waking up from a tranq always gives me parchment mouth.”
“You wake up from tranqs often?” Rae asked, her voice calm.
She was wonderful. No crying or yelling or breaking down in panic. “More than I’d care to,” Zander said. “I take it straight up, no milk or sugar, or cinnamon, whipped cream, chocolate, or all the other crap people put in coffee these days. Though a shot of vodka wouldn’t go amiss.”
Zander studied the readouts as Rae said quietly to one of the guards, “Will you please get him some coffee?”
He heard Carson grant assent and a guard walk out, closing the door behind him.
Zander had never piloted a boat like this. It was bigger than he was used to, longer and broader at the same time. The controls were different, but thank the Goddess he was a quick study. Piotr was better at this than Zander—the man could drive almost anything—but Zander’s instincts were Shifter, and he had the feeling he would need every single instinct he possessed to take them out of here. He’d love it if Rae could lift Jake out of her pocket to help, but it was probably safer for the poor guy if she didn’t.
“Starboard, five degrees,” Zander said to the pilot. “Where is that crag—the one that looks like a diving cat? There it is. What are we doing all the way over here? You two were going to run us aground in about five minutes.”
Piotr took this admonishment without a qualm. “Then we have five minutes to spare.” He looked into Zander’s face as though to ask, You okay?
Zander gave him a nod. The tranq hadn’t been that strong.
Miles kept his hands on the controls. What the hell was he doing working with a guy like Carson? There was a story there that Zander wanted to know.
“Dead straight,” Zander told him. “No, don’t turn.”
A wall had risen in front of them but Zander had encountered this before—in this particular area sunlight glittering on the droplets in the fog made it look solid.
Miles had already jerked the boat. Not good. Zander shot his bound hands out and grabbed the wheel.
“Everyone hang on to something!” he yelled.
Zander cranked them hard to starboard. The remaining guard lost his balance, stumbling, and landed on the floor. Carson kept to his feet, scowling. Rae, sensibly, sat down.
“I could do this better with my hands free,” Zander said. The boat leapt under him, the large thing too ponderous for this tight space. Why the hell had they risked bringing it into the Graveyard?
“No,” Carson said in a hard voice. He alone remained steady, his pistol unwavering.
“You want me to get us out of here or not?” Zander lifted his chained wrists toward Miles. “Can you open these?”
Miles instantly backpedaled and Zander grinned at him. Miles would feel the bite of Fae magic in the chains but it would never do for Carson to find that out.
“I don’t have the key,” Miles said breathlessly.
Zander offered his wrists to the rest of the room. “Anyone?”
“Zander!” Rae said in alarm.
The boat had shot through the curtain of glittering, icy fog, but now they headed straight for a black protrusion of land. Zander glanced at it, calculating how much time before they rammed it.
“Take these off and I’ll get us out of here safely,” he said to Carson. “If not . . .” He glanced at the swiftly approaching rock and shrugged.
Carson didn’t move, pistol held in a professional grip. “Do your best, Shifter.”
At that moment a brilliant light flashed outside, followed by a clap of thunder. Zander laughed.
“Oh, good. A rainstorm. Might clear up the fog.” Zander shrugged again. “Or it might make it worse.”
Another flash lit up the cabin, with another burst of thunder almost on top of it. The lights in the wheelhouse sputtered and then all the controls suddenly went dead.
Piotr cried out in alarm. Both he and Miles grabbed the wheel, which, if they were lucky, mechanically controlled the tiller and didn’t need power to steer it. The boat listed to the right and Zander staggered.